O Haute-Contre na Ópera: Uma análise da sonoridade vocal a partir das personagens Persée de Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) e Platée de Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764)

Abstract

The French opera maintains characteristics that distinguish it from the other European stage manifestations. With eyes focused on the dramatic musical practice between the 17th and 18th centuries, this work has as main objective to discuss one of the strongest and traditional peculiarities of baroque opera: the haute-contre voice. We understand and circumscribe haute-contre as a type of vocal classification, quality of tenor voice, which has as its main characteristics the naturally light and high voice. This type of tenor was quite common in French sacred compositions from the sixteenth century and the opera between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, occupying a prominent place in the main male roles. For this discussion, a musical analysis of the recitatives and arias of the title characters of the operas Persée of Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) composed in 1682 and Platée of Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683-1764) composed in 1745 is made. In the two compositions, the following aspects are observed: vocal extension and texture of the selected characters and the musical texture. It is called a musical texture the set of my perceptions that intertwine with the relationship between text and music, ornamentation, compass formulas, instruments used in the orchestra, connecting them to the extent and texture. These analyzes depart from the fac-similar version of the original scores. The main objective of this research, therefore, is to infer from this vocal quality of the tenor, the sonority of these voices and their qualities. It is understood in this study that the use of this voice, specifically as a highlight in the productions, was a direct reaction to the castrato voice, very popular in the stages of the independent states of the territory that currently constitutes Italy. The tenor haute-contre was a construction as a reaction to an aesthetic dispute that did not begin in the eighteenth century, but at the beginning of it becomes more visible, precisely because we believe that France was projected in a movement of distinction in relation to others European music centers (Germany, England and Italy).